in love may you find the next
by TheOnlyWayIsLove
Summary: because he'll sacrifice himself without a thought if it means there's even the slither of a chance it'll save her [post-2x16]


**A/N:** because it's weeks after the finale and my heart is truly and thoroughly smashed. I'm sorry this The 100 update isn't for _Five Times_ , but please understand that the terrible next chapter wait is a combination of my trying to do my best by Bellamy & Clarke & the Filipino heritage being woven into that chapter, and my emotional instability over trying to reconnect with the characters after the finale.

This piece is an attempt to overcome the latter of these problems. Written to Raign's cover of "Knocking On Heaven's Door", as per the finale, because clearly I hate myself. And it's not _just_ self-absorbed bellarke, although you'd be forgiven for assuming that from the beginning.

* * *

 **in love may you find the next**

He watches her leave, and there's a pain inside his chest – a rising swell of pain – that feels the darndest like his heart is finally shattering. It builds up and up, rising through his throat and airways in a choking wave.

One shuddering breath. Then another. And another, and another, and how can she just take those steps, away from him, away from them?

But at the same time, Bellamy knows exactly how she can. He gets it – gets her – completely. After all, didn't he nearly run away when he realised he'd killed three hundred people on the Ark? But for him, Clarke's measure of forgiveness was enough of the redemption he needed in his soul.

He needs it again now, but she can't – she isn't here to give it. Even though they have each killed, and tortured, and looked into the faces of their innocent victims and murdered them anyway.

Running doesn't solve anything. It just removes Clarke from the reminder of _why_ she did it, the final confirmation that yeah, it was all for the best, in the end. Didn't he tell her: we'll get through this? And didn't he remind her over the lever: together?

The wave is rising, soaking through his mind, and it takes all of his strength to stay standing as her own upright, shattered figure is absorbed into the darkness of the woods for the final time. What terrible terrible things they have done for love. And only experience has taught Bellamy that each mountain you climb, bloody and broken, is eventually overcome. The other side always exists.

 _Clarke._ He waited by the gates for her, because somehow everything in that final walk told him how she had already left in spirit. There have been many times that the world has felt hopeless, Earth the worst mistake in all of their lives, and Bellamy read it in the eyes of all his people today. But Clarke, she radiated the deepest despair.

And it feels like there's nothing left for Bellamy now either. He watched from the gate: the feet of his people trudging in, clutching each other with the physical desperation for a rock in this desperate ocean. He couldn't watch their faces for long from the guilt sitting in his veins.

His own lifeline was at the back.

And it's snapped.

The weight of it all is sinking into him like a landslide of earth, knocking him down and pulling him with it. How can she say she left for them? How, when her people – and yeah, him too – need her now, more than ever?

And yet. He completely understands.

That is the only reason he still stands there, refusing to let his wayward feet propel him to her. In this moment, it feels like the hardest thing he's ever done, and it's because every cell of his body is groaning for Clarke, and he can't remember how anything could feel so wholly destructive and _healing_ at the same time.

Here's the nub. He let her go because he gets why she has to do it. She thinks she has to leave to save herself, but it won't. Eventually – if the universe lets her live that long, and _please let her_ – she'll realise she's left herself right back here, and when she left her people, she was trying to escape the body she's bound to.

But Clarke can't see that yet, blinded by darkness as she now is. Maybe one day she'll let herself look at the sun again.

She thinks that she can't be allowed to live and love, not when Finn had to atone for his crimes, not when so many innocents weren't given their chance.

All his desperate pulls towards her – in all that time of their short reunion, where everything in him was soon wired completely to her – and then in his torture and desperate journey through the mountain they murdered – they are to live on with him in silence. Withering, maybe, if he's lucky. If she's lucky.

Because the only person broken worse by Clarke's leaving is Bellamy. And he let her leave anyway, because he'll sacrifice himself without a thought if it means there's even the slither of a chance it'll save her.

His hands are shaking and he makes himself turn away. There's no point watching the horizon. No point watching for her. No point in waiting, eagerly, for her return. He's allowed to hold hope in his heart, but not in his head, or he'll go crazy with waiting.

Bellamy makes himself take one step. Then another. He's been through hell before, and it didn't have such incredible scenery, or so many of his people safe.

Another step, and the guards can close the gates behind him. Shutting Clarke out. Like he must.

And part of him wants to sob and scream and tear everyone down just to get back to her, but she doesn't want him. That is not the answer.

 _We had no choice._ Those words over and over. And once more, Bellamy _knows_ right to his core that Clarke doesn't feel like she has a choice.

It would be nice if one day she realised she did, and that she could come back to them. Her family. Blood of her blood. He knows that none of them will truly give her up, as much as she would like them all to forget her and the things she did to save them.

Monty's suddenly there, in his vision. Broken and beaten, Monty bears this guilt too. Bellamy tries to nod. But Monty reads him all in one, looks past him to where Clarke isn't any more, and his face crumples in on itself. He probably knew too, but it's still a physical blow for her to have just _gone._

Bellamy seizes his shoulder and squeezes before moving past him, the attempt at reassurance that _okay, so maybe the three of us who did it aren't together, but I'm staying, and you'd better too._

But he knows he's not who Monty truly needs. And Jasper is going to have to run into his own woods before he can bring himself back to Monty.

None of them deserved this.

He needs to get his brain in gear, work out what to do. But he wasn't supposed to be the head of this operation they were running together. And what heart he's been left with… Bellamy can almost feel it, bleeding and soft and utterly broken, cupped in his hands.

Raven was being carried by Wick: they'll make it using each other. Miller had to do some horrendous things too, but he's finally got his father back. If Bellamy's connect-the-dots work out (as they so often, so messily, do with humans) then maybe Monty'll find his path to Nathan, and Jasper will find comfort in Harper, and eventually Jasper and Monty will reconcile as friends again.

And maybe Kane and Abby can make this strength in each other last. He can see a reflection of himself and Clarke in their passionate co-dependency, except maybe it's just a far-fetched wishful-thinking projection, because they're still here for each other and Clarke isn't.

A hand comes down lightly on his arm and Bellamy whirls, disoriented, still tangled in his thoughts. Why has he come to a stop in the middle of this corridor? How did he get here…?

Marcus Kane's face comes into weary focus. He says something Bellamy doesn't hear, and he has to shake his head and ask for a repeat.

And it's almost laughable when he does make out the words. "Are you okay?"

What a loaded question. Bellamy swallows. He can't nod, but it'd be a betrayal to shake his head. So he settles for a turn of the head that Clarke would have been able to read immediately.

Nobody else can. But somehow the beaten-up ex-Chancellor, whom Bellamy hated for so long before _and_ after coming to the ground, catches some sort of meaning. He slowly looks past Bellamy, and the lack of Clarke there is like a physical presence – a scar, Bellamy realises, everyone is reading. They had become Bellamy-and-Clarke. No longer.

Bellamy's breath catches, and he has to wipe his mind clean to avoid his guts being pulled out or chucked up or strangling him – the pain overtaking him. Imagines the silver surface of the lake. They have destroyed the mountain. But he can still access the depth and calmness of water, right?

"Bellamy." He has to look up at Kane then, and the pity written over him is terrible in its raw and potent state. "You should do it now."

Kane's own voice catches on the end. He must've come to care for Clarke too, a surrogate father. But Bellamy now knows why his feet brought him here, outside that room by the med bay, where Abby lies. He needs to tell her that her daughter has gone.

She will share this weight of pain equally with him. Bellamy just hopes for Clarke's sake that her mom understands too, the way he does.

He walks past Kane and into the room. Abby is in a shallow sleep, her tired lines smoothed and yet even more sorrowful in unconsciousness. He can't bear to sit, because once he's allowed so much as a glimpse of weakness in, he knows that'll be it. And these first minutes and hours will be the hardest, the living with the knowing she's left him and won't be coming back and not yet used to it.

So Bellamy comes to a stop beside the head of Abby's bed. It takes a minute, but that maternal sixth sense must realise something is terribly wrong, because she rouses herself despite everything she's been through. "B- Bellamy?"

It's a whisper. And it's all he can do to meet her bone-weary gaze and not collapse right there. "I – Doctor Griffin, I needed to tell you before anyone else. So you knew from the start."

"Tell me what?" Her voice is thick, but her gaze clear. Bellamy looks at this birdlike woman, so similar to Clarke, and yet so different – this inability to see what's truly going on being one of their differences. Clarke always _gets_ things before they're about to happen. Abby normally springs into action once the avalanche has begun.

"It's – " And he can't buckle, not in front of her mother. Though he can still feel his own heart quivering in his hands, slapped right in there when she gave it back, unable to care for her own destroyed heart, let alone his. "It's Clarke. She's gone, Abby."

Her eyes slowly fill up, tracking his face with infinitesimal care. And eventually, she croaks out, "Where?"

His own jaw is shivering, but Bellamy still manages to croak out, "the woods."

Doctor Abby Griffin doesn't even say anything else for long moments, her eyes just seeming to sink inwards. Then she reaches one scarred arm from beneath the blankets and grips Bellamy's useless, hanging hand with all the strength left in those clever fingers.

And this is the trigger, the final stone removed in his own dam, so that the wave of pain overtakes him at last and knocks him to his knees with a roaring sob that claws free of his ribcage in one terrible rip. Bellamy clutches her hand with both of his and heaves, tears bursting free even as he breathes harshly and deeply to work control over his body again. He's _got_ to keep it in, dammit.

Except Clarke always used to make that keeping-it-in bearable, and without her, he can't do it. How can he do it? What is he supposed to do without her?

Abby is crying too, properly weeping to his animalistic wrestle with pain. Somewhere along the way Bellamy just ends up on the floor and blacks out from the exhaustion of torture and murder and losing her. He only wakes when Octavia comes, bringing Lincoln to carry him away, in the middle of the night.

"O?" His arms slung across their shoulders, neither of the two grounders looks at him as he's pulled through the clanging corridors. But Bellamy's brief sleepy disorientation is overcome by the suckerpunch to the stomach of losing Clarke. He buckles in the physical pain of it, and his two supporters have to stop, let his arms down so he can brace them on his knees, as he shakes and shakes.

He tries to remember how to breathe properly, dispel the visions. There were nightmares of her, memories and imaginings.

But he has his sister. Always, it's for her. Octavia is enough, and she is everything.

"Bellamy." He shakes his head.

"I'll be fine in the morning." Or more likely: he'll be able to make himself stand again by dawn. Life will carry on, after a fashion. Clarke did it after her one night of weakness where she mourned Finn, where he sat near-silently beside her for hour on hour. And everyone here is now broken, every last one of his people feeling this same dread _I can't go on_.

Lincoln draws near, and says quietly, "It was because of the Commander."

And that simple answer pieces together almost all of Bellamy's hanging questions about Clarke. They come back to him in a rush, previously forgotten under the waste his tsunami of longing left behind.

 _Lexa._ Lexa with her ruthlessness and her strength and her admiration – and Clarke with that ragged heart when they found each other again – yeah, he gets it at last. He squeezes his eyes shut for a second, but all he sees are the marching feet of the thirty-something 100 remaining, the way everyone's path had crossed over with someone else's.

He'll draw strength from them together. Like he said to Clarke, they'll get through this.

He locks eyes with his little sister, and she offers a hand.

Together, he thinks, they'll find a way. Together.

He takes it.

* * *

 **A/N:** Unexpectedly, this was very therapeutic. I feel like I've been able to move through the stages of grief through writing Bellamy, ha, and have regained a kernel of enthusiasm for some of my old bellarke fic now?! Wow.

I've also got more Bellamy fanfic if you fancy! If you want some more angst (of the post-mid-season-finale variety) see "wear a necklace of hope (if we met at midnight in the hanging tree)". If you want more hopeful and enjoyable bellarke, see "five times Clarke healed Bellamy (and one time he healed her)" – that's a WIP I'm still updating.

(also howsabout people stop telling Bellamy "you did good here" then aBANDONING HIM in finales, honestly. also can Kane please realise he's Bellamy's father already pls + thank, because frankly it'd be book-canon and seeing as Bellamy isn't getting any of the good things that came to him in the books…)

Thanks for reading!


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